An
astrobiologist working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center outside Huntsville, Alabama has made an astounding
claim. In a recently published journal article, he claims to have
discovered a preserved alien life form residing inside a meteor that journeyed
through the vast black of space before impact our planet.

This extra-terrestrial may not be a bulbous-headed humanoid like in the movies,
but it may offer up an answer to one of mankind's greatest inquiries -- are we
alone in the universe?

The researcher, Dr. Richard B. Hoover [profile], had to go to extraordinary lengths
to make his discovery. He reasoned that if alien microbes were to hitch a
ride on a meteorite, they would likely have to do so in a special meteor.

Specifically, he zeroed in on the CI class of carbonaceous chrondite meteors.
These meteors are rich in water, amino acids, and other organic
compounds -- seemingly a virtual pantry for a microorganism.

Picking the most ideal type of CI meteorite -- CI1 optimized his chances, but
narrowed his pool of available specimens. In total only nine such meteorites
are known to exist on Earth.

After going to great lengths to obtain one of these meteorites, he destroyed a
piece of it, smashing it apart. Using scanning-electron microscopes and
field emissions electron-scanning microscopes he images the result dust and
fragments and made the extraordinary discovery he was hoping for -- what
appears to be a fossilized bacteria.

The identified specimen appears remarkably similar to the bacteria Titanospirillum
velox, a sulfur-loving archaebacteria, which was discovered in 1999 mud samples from Spain.

The meteorite was reportedly broken under carefully controlled sterile
conditions. Now the only unknown is whether the meteorite could have
somehow been contaminated. The meteors were sterilely harvested in the
frigid reaches of Antarctica immediately after their observed fall. The
fact that they were collected so quickly limits the possibility that indigenous
microbes contaminated them. The possibility of atmospheric contamination still remains,
though.

Dr. Hoover believes that this is not a case of contamination. He is
convinced that he has become the first human to record a scientifically
verifiable encounter with an alien being. He states in
a recent interview, "I interpret it as indicating that life is more
broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet Earth. This field of
study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a great many
scientist would say that this is impossible."

The discovery has been met with a great deal of skepticism, but also
fascination. Dr. Hoover writes in a note to the editor's note
accompanying his study, "Given the controversial nature of his discovery,
we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists
from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical
analysis. No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a
thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific
community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important
research paper before it is published."

With the paper currently peer-reviewed and published [abstract] in the Journal of Cosmology,
Dr. Hoover's discovery will face its next critical test, with the collected
materials being examined by a second research team for verification and
validation.

Dr. Hoover is confident his discovery will be validated. He comments,
"A lot of times it takes a long time before scientists start changing
their mind as to what is valid and what is not. I’m sure there will be many
scientists that will be very skeptical and that’s OK."

"If someone can explain how it is possible to have a biological remain
that has no nitrogen, or nitrogen below the detect ability limits that I have,
in a time period as short as 150 years, then I would be very interested in
hearing that. I’ve talked with many scientists about this and no one has been
able to explain."

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

You're an idiot. I'm going to do this one more time for the off chance that you actually just aren't getting it...but it seems far more likely that you're just stupid.

A mundane claim requires mundane proof...because on either side of that equation, the information is already mundane. The claim that 2+2 equals 4 is a very mundane claim...it's barely interesting at all, and intuitively seems very obvious. The proof, demonstrating how collecting items together in pairs to add up to 4, is also barely interesting at all, and seems very obvious. Ergo, mundane.

The claim that alien life exists in space and/or on other planets is extraordinary...it's not obvious at all (indeed, there is no proof as of yet at all that supports that claim) and far outside what one normally experiences during the normal course of their life. Because of that, the claim is, by definition, and extraordinary claim.

That extraordinary claim cannot be backed up by mundane evidence. You can't say "This rock, which may or may not have been infiltrated by terrestrial microbes, has formations that rather look like they are the result of biological processes...therefore I have proven that life exists elsewhere." Your proof is not equal to the claim. If the proof is not equal to the claim, then the claim is unproven.

On the other hand, if you did truly have extraordinary evidence...say, a walking, talking, alien from outerspace who's biological makeup is based on silicon instead of carbon and doesn't even involve DNA but rather has a fundamental biology never before seen on this planet, well then you might just have proof that is equal to the claim. And that proof would be, obviously, extraordinary - after all, the number of times anyone on this planet has ever actually seen an alien life form is zero. If you came up with one, it would be the most extraordinary event in human history.

Now stop being a f#cktard and pretending that you don't need proof of the same caliber as the claim to substantiate a theory.

Verdict: Case thrown out, due to a confusion on the part of the prosecution between intelligence and holding a differing opinion. The prosecution is advised to go back and study what intelligence and opinion actually are, to learn some respect... in short is advised to go back to school. ;-)

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